U.N. Stand On Truce Talks Attacked As “Fantastic”

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26729, 13 May 1952, Page 7

U.N. Stand On Truce Talks Attacked As “Fantastic”

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, May 12. Alone among the national newspapers, the “Sunday Express,” under the name of its editor, John Gordon, in a leading article strongly criticises the attitude adopted by the United Nations over the Korean truce talks, particularly the contention that they cannot compromise on the question of repatriation of North Korean prisoners in their hands. Gordon, discussing what he calls “a fantastic situation in a remote, unprofitable and ungodly hole,” suggests that the reason the North Koreans do not want to go home is not because they are afraid of Communism, but because for the first time in their lives they are well fed and living in comfort, and, naturally, they do not want to return to the primitive slave conditions of their own country. “I suggest we should be very certain this is not what is happening before We decide that British boys shall continue to give their lives in that distant, inhospitable and worthless land just because 70,000 North Koreans find prisoner-of-war life too comfortable to give up, he says.

"For, on the present look of things, they may never get home at all if it depends on the consciences of North Koreans. “We might be a little wiser if we sat back and reflected whether tire price of protecting some consciences may not be r little too much. "We have reached the stage of fantasy. We have not only adopted the South Koreans, but we are taking the North Koreans to our bosom as well. “The Marx war has developed into the Marx Brothers war. That statement may arouse some of our sentimentalists to fury. But look at the position. After months of negotiation we reached the point When an armistice seemed possible. “Curious Piece of Nonsense” “Then the whole thihg broke dowh on as curious a piece of nonsense as ever developed in a war. Apparently we cannot end the war because 70,0(M) North Korean prisoners decline to go home. We are told they refuse to be Sent home because they are afraid of Communism. “But these people are among the most primitive and economically depressed peoples in Asia. The luckiest live in hovels and many eke out an animal-like existence in fields and ditches. “The moment they became prisoners, there was a transformation as staggering as that which happens when the Good Fairy waves her wand in a fairy tale. "For the first time in their lives these hovel and ditch dwellers found themselves in a comfortable home with no need to Work, no need to search for food. “If you were a North Korean would you elect to go home in such Circumstances? I doubt it.”